The Football Grump

Now, for one, there were a lot of key just straight-up drops that happened on third down between Darius Slayton and Theo Johnson.

There were a lot of really good throws that show up as incompletions on the stat sheet and on third down that were like threading the needle.

And they did happen on third down.

So I think in some regards, he was even better statistically on third down than what we can credit him for.

Yeah.

But you're right.

So like a lot of the a lot of the third down success, I think, can be attributed to not just like standing and rocking in the pocket and then just like ripping one over the middle.

I mean, a lot of the plays are him stepping up in the pocket away, you know, pumping left and throwing middle or, you know, freezing, freezing the safety or a linebacker that's coming up to hit him with a pump fake and then running past him.

A lot of the the wow plays happen on third down.

A lot of bad sacks also happen on third down.

What really blew my mind in rewatching him for this episode, though, was a lot of the... A healthy portion of the third down conversions were throws that were, like, right at the sticks.

Like, it...

third and 12s, third and 19s, third and 17s.

And it's like hitting Theo Johnson or Rondale, like literally right at the sticks, like kind of breaking a tackle and reaching forward and getting it.

It's kind of incredible how often that was happening, which tells me at least that he is more than aware of the field.

You know what I mean?

Like he has very good field awareness where the sticks are, what the objective of that particular down is.

And what he really needs to do just to kind of like marry this conversation with the confidence thing is keep that awareness into the late game.

Right.

And like you were saying with like Eli Manning and just being cold, if the defense is going to give you the short stuff and you have the time and the timeouts.